


cut from the cloth

by WinnietheShit



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-30
Updated: 2013-03-30
Packaged: 2017-12-06 23:16:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/741325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WinnietheShit/pseuds/WinnietheShit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>when they sing of the north</p>
            </blockquote>





	cut from the cloth

When they sing of the North, they will sing of the Starks.

They will sing of blue eyes of ice and grey eyes of steel, of the soft hands of the queen who wielded courtesy and the coarse hands of a princess wielding a blade. 

They will sing of a coronation, grey within the halls of Winterfell, and an accolade, white without in the banks of snow.

 

_(Sansa tells of the crown's weight settling 'pon her head; Arya tells of the cold kiss of steel 'gainst her bare shoulders.)  
_

 

They will sing of the queensguard, of a wolf and a hound who never leave the other's side - not out of love for each other, but out of love for their queen.

They will sing of battles won, foes slain, and blood spilled for the queen with eyes of ice and hair the red of weirwood sap.

They will not sing of the knight's quick prayers before each kill.  They will not sing of the princess's icy smile as her blade slides through flesh.

They will not sing of the little she-wolf's insistence on attempts to outdrink the Hound.  They will not sing of bruises left her arms from the Hound's punches when she irritates him.  ( _She_ will not sing of them either.  She will attempt to bruise him in turn, and she will fail.  He will wince anyway.)  They will not sing of the evening where both the Hound and the she-wolf found themselves well into their cups, nor of how she somehow convinced him to let her ride upon his shoulders, nor of their long trek down the halls of Winterfell, both bellowing  _The Bear and the Maiden Fair_  loud enough for all the castle to hear.

 

_(Sansa laughs of it for years to come.  Arya and Sandor deny the event's very existence._

_Nobody in the castle even bothers to pretend to believe them.)_

 

They will sing of long, grey-eyed looks sent the queen's way when she turns her back. 

They will not sing of long, blue-eyed looks sent the knight's way when he turns his back, nor of the short, sharp, quick grey-eyed glances cast between the two, watching them watch.

They will sing of the first time the princess kills for the Hound.

They will sing of the first time the Hound returns the favor.

 

_(And when Sandor dies, Sansa cradles his head in her lap and presses her kisses to both sides of his face._

_Arya drives her sword through the throat of the man who delivered the fatal blow and laugh as his blood sprays onto her face._

_Her eyes will sting and water with rage and hurt._

_She will never tell.)_

 

They will sing of a brother, lost and lonely and thin, sitting high up in his tower with his eyes wide open and unseeing and his fingers twitching as his legs never will again.

They will not sing of three times the princess went to see him and three times the princess returned pale and trembling.  The first time she returns, she will say nothing.  The second time, she will weep in her sister's arms.  The third time, she will only say "Jon Snow is not our brother," and the queen will not reply "half-brother" as she once might have.

They will not sing of the queen's lips pressed to her sister's hair, murmuring sweet consolations.   

They will sing of a cousin at the Wall, once dead and once returned by the kiss of fire.  They will sing of a snow-white dragon given him by the Targaryen queen in the south, of the flames bursting from the great reptile's mouth, so hot the Wall begins to sweat.  They will sing of a princess's flight to the wall, armed with long blades of dragonglass given her by the green-eyed maester.

 

_(Arya rejects the new man her brother - cousin - has become._

_She fights alongside him and Daenerys Targaryen regardless._

_She tells herself she stays for the dragons and the Wall._

_She lies.)_

 

They will sing of a lost Targaryen princeling come to take the Targaryen queen's throne.  They will sing of a greenseer's whispers reaching a dragon princess's ear, and she will learn this pretender is no princeling at all, no Targaryen at all, and she will not kill him.  She will offer him a dragon, and he will take it without a moment's hesitation, and he will die.  The queen will laugh.

They will sing, "Fire cannot kill a dragon."

They will not sing of the third dragon, of the green dragon.

 

_(Drogon stays with Daenerys.  He comes to learn which actions grant him weeks in the Dragonpit._

_Viserion roams the Wall alongside Ghost, eyes blood-red against the stark white of their bodies._

_Rhaegal flies between the North and South for months, unsure of where his home is, who his home is._

_The great reptile's mighty bellows are heard for miles, and the foundations of castles shake with each roar.  And then he disappears, and they see and hear nothing of him other than rumors of a great green dragon flying over Essos, until years he returns to Westeros with - or so the stories say - a small, ugly man upon his back._

_Reports of sightings last for a week, and then the two are never seen again.)_

 

They will sing of six marriage proposals for the Queen in the North, and two for her younger sister.  They will not sing of her threat to disembowel the second, nor that no suitor came calling again after that.

They will not sing of those the princess takes to her bed, the vagrants and wayward knights and wildlings and ladies unhappy with their lords.  

They will especially not sing of the men the queen takes to her bed.  

 

_(Sansa knows from the moment she dubs her little sister a knight that Arya will never keep her vow of chastity as a member of the queensguard.  Walking into her sisters chambers to find a sleeping man sprawled naked over the bed is unsurprising.  What is surprising is Arya's reaction to the knowledge that not even Sansa has not been true to her reputations as a virgin queen._

_"You are being hypocrytical."_

_"I am not being hypocritical!  It's surprising, is all, to learn that my older sister is not as chaste as a queen famed for her chastity ought to be."_

_"Sarcasm is most unbecoming in a lady."_

_"I am no lady.  Who is it?  I can't see you as anything other than a faithful lover - seven hells, I can't even see you as a lover - but tell, who is it?  Is it the Hound?"_

_Sansa doesn't bother to dignify that with a response._ _)_

 

They will sing of a she-wolf's return to Westeros, skin nut-brown from the eastern sun and eyes sharp and cold from longing, and of a lady's open-armed welcome for her lost sister.

They will sing of a direwolf's return to her mistress, brambles clinging to her fur.  They will not sing of the blood staining her maw nor of the claw marks she rakes down her mistress's arms when tackling her to the ground.  They will not sing of a lady's tears as she recalls her own direwolf, nor her tears when a hound of her own steps out of the woods, blood streaking his armor and terrible scars distorting his face.

They will sing of a war fought against a stag who will only keep his throne for a year before the dragons come.  They will sing of a treaty made and a new war fought against the beasts beyond the Wall, a war won with dragons and fire and glass. 

They will sing of Sansa Stark's coronation, and they will sing of Arya Stark's accolade shortly therafter.

They will sing of lovelorn knights and a wolf and a hound fighting side by side.  They will sing of brothers lost and cousins found and queens returned and princes denounced.  They will sing of dragons roaring in the snow and wolves tumbling among the bedsheets.  They will sing of a kingdom won with ice and ruled with fire.

They will sing of ice in the queen's eyes and fire in her hair.

They will sing of ice in the princess's smile and fire in her blood.

When they sing of the North, they will sing of the Starks.

When they sing of the Starks, they will sing of ice and fire.

**Author's Note:**

> title from "flesh and bone" by the killers because i'm unoriginal


End file.
